/removes Tak and Wooley from Christmas card list for overdramatic.
/removes MKS from Christmas card list for agitator
OVERDRAMATIC?!
David Byrne, American Utopia, 2019
This is a concert documentary of Byrne's show that played on Broadway, filmed by Spike Lee.
I thought this was pretty excellent. Byrne and his collection of singers/musicians/dancers are all bursting with talent. The dance choreography is complex and meticulous, but very accessible so that it always adds to what is happening on stage.
Some of Byrne's between-song dialogue might seem too on the nose for some people, but I appreciated that he made his points (at times bluntly) and then got back to the music. Like it or not, the dialogue firmly grounds this performance in time and place--urging people to register to vote, and a song commemorating Black victims of police violence (feel depressed as you realize how many more people died in the time between the performance of the song and watching it now--for example George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor are honored in images following the song).
In terms of the filming itself, I quite liked Lee's approach, which made use of bold camera moves and angles that gave the film a dynamic, intimate, and exhilarating feeling without the sense that you are missing important moments.
I would totally watch this again.
Diana, 2018
A framing device shows us a high-end escort, Sofia, being interviewed by a journalist. We then watch as a man, Juno, whose company is about to go big books a date with her.
This movie suckered me in with an interesting cover, and I was very underwhelmed.
I'll start by admitting that I didn't really understand what was happening at time (and whether it was meant to be real or in a character's head) and I did not care to rewind and figure it out. The two lead actors are . . . fine.
Movies LOVE to portray characters who are sex workers, as the explicit transactional nature of their work allows for exploration of the dynamics between men and women. But this film falls into some face-palming elements, such as asserting that sex workers are the ones with all the power (LOL, no!), asserting that it's the male clients who are most in danger when they visit sex workers (LOL! NO!), and just generally portraying things that make little sense (such as the main character booking two clients immediately back to back). The director also can't seem to resist throwing a ton of butt shots into the movie. These make sense when they seem to be from the male character's point of view--showing how Sofia is seducing him. But many of the shots . . . are just there. In a film that uses a lot of subjective/POV stuff, these disembodied jiggle shots stand out in a bad way. (And please pretend to be shocked when I tell you that a film portraying multiple sexual encounters only gets the male character undressed one time, and it's for a scene of sexual violence).
There's supposed to be this whole mystery element and Sofia has a past and what does her tattoo that says "Diana" mean and blah, blah, blah. The film totally underdelivers in this regard.
I was also confused by the film's idea of "edgy" sex play, because it casually includes strangulation (which is incredibly high risk) in several sequences, but later wants us to believe that Sofia putting her foot on Juno's face is, like, really intense power play. I just felt baffled much of the time about what the sex was supposed to be telling us about these characters and their relationship/dynamic.
I will say this for it: there is a dog that appears in the last act that earned the film a whole star. That's about the nicest thing I can say for it. At one point I was like "Oh, thank god. It's over." And then there were 20 more minutes.
Oh, and the ending makes zero sense. Skip.